Lost in Control
We’ve spent 10,000 years adapting the environment to suit our needs, now the time has come we adapted ourselves to suit the environment we have created.
We are living in a world driven by fixing problems, yet every solution seems to create new ones. Climate change, self-improvement, and technological advances have made our lives more complex than ever. The more we try to control the chaos, the more it spirals out of reach. What if the answer isn’t tighter control but a radical shift in perspective?
In our ever-evolving world, we are trapped in an endless cycle of problems and solutions. Each answer leads to new questions, and each solution introduces unintended consequences. The deeper we dig, the more we realise that certainty remains elusive. The pursuit of control, rather than offering stability, often leaves us feeling more lost than before. We are lost in control…
Take the self-improvement industry, for example. Many turn to productivity apps, time management techniques, self-help books, and coaching to gain control over their lives. Yet, instead of simplifying things, these tools often lead to information overload, decision fatigue, and the constant pressure to optimise. The pursuit of self-improvement can become an endless loop — each new strategy adding another layer of complexity. Ironically, we now turn to AI agents to help us navigate this chaos, outsourcing control in an attempt to regain it… outsourcing our agency and leaving it — our future — to others to decide.
Since the Agricultural Revolution — some 10,000–12,000 years ago — humanity has relentlessly adapted its environment to suit its needs. We have innovated, optimised, and reshaped the world around us in pursuit of progress. Yet, this relentless drive for control over our environment has led to unintended consequences: increasing stress, anxiety, and a growing sense that we are no longer in control of the world we created.
We see this everywhere — from technological advancements that outpace our understanding to social structures that create more division than unity. The external world is accelerating at an uncontrollable pace, bolting into the unknown. Instinctively, we chase after it, hoping to control it with more knowledge, more technology, and ever more complex solutions. The more we try to catch up, the further we seem to be from a solution — from control — leading us deeper into uncertainty, fuelling our anxiety even more.
But what now? We cannot suddenly stop progress for a couple of centuries for us to catch up.
What if the real challenge isn’t chasing after it to control it? I’m not saying there shouldn’t be control over it — that there shouldn’t be a watchdog to keep progress in line with human values and the betterment of mankind. Because, after all, isn’t that what we were and are striving for in the first place with our solutions?
Maybe instead of continuing this futile pursuit, we must stop chasing and embrace a different approach. A shift in perspective — instead of trying (and failing) to gain control over our environment, we must gain control over ourselves. Instead of exhausting ourselves in a never-ending struggle to control external chaos, we must take control of our evolution, our mismatched traits, and how we react. Leaving it to chance was fine for 99% of our evolutionary history, but today, it has become a problem.
I don’t know if I am making myself clear. It is a growing awareness, a deepening conviction I’ve written and talked about before that has only strengthened over the past few weeks — while rewriting my book Futurize Yourself for republication this year — that to keep up with change, we need to change ourselves.
Then, early last week, while watching the TED talk The Future Will Be Shaped by Optimists by Kevin Kelly (2021), I had this moment — this felt sense — that something important was being said. It happened exactly 7 minutes and 41 seconds into the talk. I had to rewind several times to fully grasp what Kelly was saying:
“Optimism is about embracing problems because it’s problems that make solutions, and solutions that make problems. So I believe that most of the problems we have today are generated by the solutions of the past. And the great one is this climate change. The solution in the past was artificial power — ‘Where do we get it?’ ‘OK, here it is.’ But now it makes the problem now. That means that today, most of the solutions that we have will be generating the problems of the future. And there will be more problems because new solutions create many more problems. In the same way, when science answers a question, that answer will generate two or three new questions — things that we didn’t even know we didn’t know. And so, in a peculiar way, science is expanding our ignorance faster than our knowledge.
So we have an unlimited pool of questions and problems. But problems don’t impede progress. Problems are the conduit of progress. No problems, no progress.
… So we have a choice about optimism. It’s not a temperament. No matter what your temperament is, you can still choose to be optimistic. And gigantic problems require gigantic optimism.”
You can watch this TED talk, which has over 2.24 million views, here.
Like a moment of clarity breaking through dense, dark clouds, I realised that optimism — while necessary to confront problems, as Kevin Kelly argues — on its own is not enough. Optimism without a structured way to act can lead to frustration. It can become yet another solution that creates a new problem, leading to inaction and dissonance, fuelling anxiety and deepening the divide.
And then it struck me — wait a minute… The Futurizing Yourself steps can provide what’s missing. It’s a concrete and realistic optimistic framework for gaining control over ourselves, for evolving ourselves to navigate rising uncertainty and complexity. Right!?
Slowly, my felt sense — what I hadn’t been able to articulate before — started to crystallise. The answer had been there all along. Futurizing Yourself designing y’our life on purpose; it’s about saying stop to the rat race, the chasing trying control the outside world but actively engaging in protopian thinking from within to better adapt to the outside, to the fast-changing world we live in. A world we have lost control over but by regaining control over ourselves by evolving ourselves we don’t have to control it. We can leave that to the bodies that are responsible for it but by self-betterment, by developing our potential we can improve our knowledge, futures literacy, critical and protopian thinking and so many other faculties…
It was, is so obvious in hindsight.
To be continued…
You can also listen to an Ai Deep Dive version of this article on Spotify and Apple Podcasts that was made with NotbeookLM.
This article was written by Tom Meyers with the assistance of ChatGPT, blending personal insights and advanced AI support to create a compelling and impactful message.
